DOSE:

250 mg

buccal

Salvia divinorum

(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

78 kg

* Microdosing the hell.
The title of this report is a joke. Salvia can be very terrifying according to many testimonies. My experiences with the high-dose Salvia were positive, as if there was always something to learn from this plant teacher. So I decided to try microdosing. I try to structure the report following Erowid's template (Hanna J. "Communicating Experience". Erowid Extracts. Jun 2006;10:20 url).

* Basic Details
I am a 37 year old male with deep interest into self-development (bodywork, breathwork, meditation) facilitated by plant medicines and psychedelics. I am mentally quite stable and I currently do not undertake psychotherapy and don't take any medications. I have rich experiences with psychedelics. The microdosing experiment took two weeks and happened a month ago.

* Drug Identification and Administration
I bought pure dry Salvia leaves (no extract, a "1x") in a country where you can buy it legally in coffee shops and online stores. I used a tea/brew method: I put the leaves to cook for 15 minutes in a tiny amount of water, like the volume of my mouth. Then I held the brew for 15 minutes in my mouth. I set the dose to be 250 mg and it was just hitting the sweet spot. I dosed in the morning, not each day, roughly 2 days out of three. Often I sat down to meditate for 20 minutes with the brew in my mouth.

* Context
I have an office job as a researcher. In the weeks previous to the microdosing experiment I had been feeling lack of motivation and concentration at work. My personal emotional life was very challenging because of a conflict with my family.

* Effects
The overall experience was inspiring, meaningful, partly pleasant and I am open to doing it again. In general I experienced heightened awareness. Maybe the Salvia made my thoughts feel slightly more distant from me. Compared to, e.g., psilocybin, I did not feel more emotional than usually. Immediately after the ingestion, the visual field changed in a tiny way, that it was impossible to describe it, yet it kept seducing my curiosity for the details of the outside world. In the turmoils of my conflict with the family, I felt a bit more distant from my own emotions and thoughts.

* Notes on certain ingestion days

The first day: Upon ingestion I start to feel slight anxiety. I link it to the fear I experienced with strong doses of Salvia -- the fear of leaving my own body, mind and leaving this world. The present anxiety is easily manageable. When leaving my apartment, I sense some heaviness in my body and dizziness in my head. These feelings are not annoying, it is rather curious to explore them. During the rest of the day I do not notice anything uncomfortable, but a tiny shift of consciousness, inviting me to stay tuned to it.

Random Day 1:
Again I fear a bit that my mind is leaving this dimension quick after the ingestion. Do psychiatrists calls this derealization? The world feels different, strange, but not worse. When leaving my house in the morning, plants and trees call my attention and I feel I can connect with them. My awareness increases and thoughts go quiet. At work I experience a better focus, and the mind is not rushing. Although analytics slows down, I feel productive and in a flow.

Random Day 2:
I take the brew at work upon arrival. I sense improved concentration. As if I felt less disturbed by the voices within. I surrender to the flow of creativity and I get rewarded by tranquility and serenity.

Exp Year: 2020	ExpID: 114182
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 37
Published: Mar 23, 2020	Views: 1,575
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Salvia divinorum (44) : Various (28), Performance Enhancement (50), Preparation / Recipes (30), Retrospective / Summary (11)